Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
with no reasons given. One could assume that Withers and
his associates were now in disgrace, but there had been no
report of the matter in the Press or on the telescreen. That
was to be expected, since it was unusual for political offend-
ers to be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great
purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of
traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession
of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special
show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of
years. More commonly, people who had incurred the dis-
pleasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never
heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what
had happened to them. In some cases they might not even
be dead. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Win-
ston, not counting his parents, had disappeared at one time
or another.
Winston stroked his nose gently with a paper-clip. In the
cubicle across the way Comrade Tillotson was still crouch-
ing secretively over his speakwrite. He raised his head for
a moment: again the hostile spectacle-flash. Winston won-
dered whether Comrade Tillotson was engaged on the same
job as himself. It was perfectly possible. So tricky a piece of
work would never be entrusted to a single person: on the
other hand, to turn it over to a committee would be to ad-
mit openly that an act of fabrication was taking place. Very
likely as many as a dozen people were now working away
on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said. And
presently some master brain in the Inner Party would se-
lect this version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion